Recipe : Pork Kaldereta

I came from a family of good cooks. Not the professional-chef-like material but rather the good everyday food type. My grandma is the best cook I have known and though it takes my mom a little practice for her cooking to reach perfection, she certainly can make up a good meal. Likewise, all of my aunts and uncles are good cooks in their own ways. Ask around our little bario in batangas and they’ll confirm what I said.

I won’t claim that I inherited their secret powers in the kitchen. I didn’t. But I know how to cook everyday meal if the need arise. I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I had been doing some cooking here in Singapore. I don’t know anything fancy just the good old sinigang, pork steak, adobo, prito and torta. And I get by with these menu quiet well. Realizing that I am always stuck one lazy Saturday after another at home with nothing else better to do, I decided to try and learn more dishes. I asked my Ate Lala for two recipes when I went home for the Christmas holidays: kaldereta and menudo. And for this week, I cooked kaldereta. The end result is not that good yet (it’s too salty) but I think for a first try, it deserves a passing mark. Though that doesn’t really count because I cooked it and now I’m reviewing how it tasted. Hehehe… Nonetheless, I decided to post the recipe from my tita here. Maybe, somewhere in the corner of cyberspace, someone would find his / her way through this blog and try to cook caldereta this way. ;)

May I make several suggestions to your Caldereta recipe? The best Caldereta on the planet is from Batangas. It has several differences from that from in other regions. Batangas caldereta doesn’t add vegetables like potatoes, carrots or bell peppers etc. It simply makes use of a rich sauce and beef or pork or goat and even chicken.

One of the things I found wrong in your recipe was the use of pickles, pineapple juice, and peanut better for starters. maybe that’s why it didn’t turn out that well.

So I copied your recipe down and made some adjustments to it.

I hope you don’t mind. It’s all for the sake of the science of food and those who love to eat!

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Grace likes old movies and watch Friends episodes over and over again. She recently moved to San Francisco with her husband for work and is trying her best to find her spot in this corner of the world.
She loves and adores her hubby, has a burning passion for her job and she firmly believes that her family are the most important people in the world.